I have been telling people this too.
The other part is they risk becoming people who "learnt to code" in Javascript and will therefore attempt to solve every problem and adopt the "shit's easy" attitude.
In essence if you know how to write and do math(logic), then you know how to code already, learning a specific syntax gives you nothing more. The last thing we need is more "hackers", they water down the talent pool and have already created a world where developers have to jump through the most ridiculous tests simply to get to a real interview because the HR department can't cope with all the applications from people who "learnt to code".
Mike Bloomberg should have tweeted "I am going to learn Spanish" (or Chinese if he knows fluent Spanish), that would have caused all kinds of industries to think "wow, respect".

The whole "everyone should learn programming" meme has gotten so out of control that the mayor of New York City actually vowed to learn to code in 2012. A noble gesture to garner the NYC tech community vote, for sure, but if the mayor of New York City actually needs to sling JavaScript co...